Kinship

117:

Although adults have more life experience than children they nevertheless, in one particular way, don’t differ from kids ... since both adult and child have an innate sense of kinship. They enjoy each other’s company. They have a sense of guardianship for each other, the elder for the younger and (perhaps later in life) vice versa.
In the same way each child and adult has a strong sense of kinship with companion animals - the family dog is like one of the kids in the family. Humans seem to be naturally wanting to protect vulnerable ones from being hurt or exploited ... but turn that ‘protect-switch’ off when we are busy entertaining murderous thoughts. We like to think of ourselves as loving and yet we still want to be brutish ... so, isn’t that why we let ourselves be persuaded to feel differently, feel hard ... when needs be? When it comes to naked self-interest, when it’s about food, we go ‘not-protective’ ... when it comes to certain other animals ... in other places ... instead, a brutish sanctioning of murder takes place.
At that point we are not our own person ... in as much as we cave into the violence creed of society. Perhaps it’s embedded so deeply in our culture, cauterising the softness in ourselves. It feels almost natural. We accept that we’re incontrovertibly programmed and can’t unprogramme ourselves ... “it’s in the hardwiring” ... and all compassion-ey stuff is deliberately NOT to be thought about too much.
Even if people fancied the soft side of themselves, it’s too risky to go that way ... more often, we just can’t resist the validation that violence brings. We think “impossible. I just couldn’t overcome that” ... and that fits in nicely anyway, since most people don’t really want to drop that side of themselves. Why would they need to? To date, things are working out quite well or well enough. Why rock the boat? “Go vegan” ... “You’re surely having a lend of me?”
For just about every human living today, it’s vital to think “calm sea and prosperous voyage”, it’s a sort of compromised compact we sign in return for a quiet life. Of course this turns out to be a disastrously misguided compact ... but, by which time, it’s rather too late, too many habits are ingrained, etc., and rocking the boat seems suicidal. So we settle for the compromised version of life and say, “Yes”. It’s okay to exploit animals if you eat them”. And, “Yes, they may be killed but if I eat them and make fullest use of their bodies, that will exonerate me, somewhat”.
This proposition is weird, but it’s likely that most people privately subscribe to something similar (a sort of crypto-environmental angle ... on the okay-ed-ness of killing animals). It’s nonsense of course because it’s so obviously attempting to divert from the core thing here, our inner need to be softer, more compassionate, etc.
All this is a thousand times magnified when it comes to those people who live by the animal.
If you are an employee of the Animal Industry, if exploiting animals produces your dollars and wages, if you work in the field, it’s hardly likely you’ll have much of a ‘guardian instinct’ for the animals, you’re helping to kill. Being non-guardian, cauterising this side of ourselves ... it’s a must for farmers. But not that much different for consumers.
Little wonder then, that society does not discuss welfare-issues (concerning those animals used for food and clothing) let alone ‘rights’- issues. State-sponsored education never mentions having kinship with these sorts of animals, only a need for kindness and respect towards certain other animals ... wild or companion. Most education revolves around the need for humans to eat meat, milk and eggs, and it emphasises the serious danger to our health if we don’t. This is what vegans are up against.